Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.

Times and dates in your local timezone.

Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.

t wrote:You manage your own time and it is up to you to pass the clock.

You've made this point multiple times.

1. Are you a TO?
2. Is "Slow Play" a common complaint in your tournaments?
3. Besides time clocks, what other steps have YOU taken to stop slow players?
3a. Talked to repeat offenders?
3b. Banned repeat offenders from the next month's tournament?
3c. Done nothing and have decided to impose chess clocks so that you don't have to be the "bad guy?"

t wrote:You manage your own time and it is up to you to pass the clock.

You've made this point multiple times.

1. Are you a TO?
2. Is "Slow Play" a common complaint in your tournaments?
3. Besides time clocks, what other steps have YOU taken to stop slow players?
3a. Talked to repeat offenders?
3b. Banned repeat offenders from the next month's tournament?
3c. Done nothing and have decided to impose chess clocks so that you don't have to be the "bad guy?"

I co run the Rampager league with a friend, not sure he is on Dakka, and if he is I don't know his user name.

I was at first against chess clocks since I play really fast it and slow play has never affected me. After this year's Dragonfall, where I watched my 2nd game opponent take 55 minutes (Stop watches are your friend) to deploy and play turn one (after I had null deployed) in a 2:30ish round and then proceed to throw a fit, calling me a poor sport, because I wouldn't let him play out turn 5 to win the game with 10 minutes left, I came around to the idea.

Now to answer your questions the best I can.

1: Yes. See above.
2: Sort of. We have a few players that I've had to call dice down on during events because the event had to move forward. I hate forcing a game to end on turn two or three but some times it happens.
3: Called dice down, warned them that if they keep playing they are using not only their time, but everyone else's.
3a: See point 3.
3b: I'm not going to ban people, some people just play slow or play slower armies. The scene was border line dead till we took over a year ago, banning people will do nothing to help rebuild.
3c: If it means we can finish the event in a timely manner I'm all for it. People downright refuse to drop in points so if you can afford it chess clocks seem like a good middle of the road solution.

Lastly, for whatever reasons, Kronk, you've been adamantly against chess clocks. If it's not your money thats being spent on them why all the hate for it?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/02/22 18:10:37

I guy I play would LOVE if we used clocks.
He is CONSTANTLY claiming other people are not going fast enough yet seems to take his time on his own turn.
The main thing is by trying to rush people he is trying to get them to make mistakes.

I can only see benefit of the chess clock to give a little pressure to think ahead, handle your turn efficiently and above all know your rules.

I would list it as a great means of promoting learning but little else.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Rynner wrote: If it's not your money thats being spent on them why all the hate for it?

As others has mentioned, the method t has proposed is cumbersome, to say the least.

In the examples above, You have called dice down on players going over, and as a good TO, that's the right thing to do.

You got cheated at a tournament by a player using up nearly 1/2 of the game time on turn one through slow play. Again, as a good player, you called him out on it and involved the TO as needed.

My point is, you're doing the things I'd expect to happen. Why do you need the clock?

If I showed up to a tournament and they had them, I'd still play. It's not a deal breaker. Maybe I need less caffeine. As for why I've bothered posting in this thread, it has to do with how t is presenting his arguments. It comes off as "Everyone is asking for this, so here goes." Which rubs me the wrong way.

"The issue of time exploiting in tournament games has been getting a lot of attention again lately" No it hasn't. It seems to be a one-man crusade. Citations needed or withdraw the claim.

"TO's are already looking into how to best integrate chess clocks into their events." Citation needed. 2 guys in your local shop or 250 TOs across the US/World?

As an aside: I have played at Dragonfall, actually. It was the first one in 2015? It was billed as a "friendly", but I thought many of the lists were not. However, the TO's did a decent job pairing off people with competitive vs. friendly lists. Met some good players/people, for sure.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/02/22 18:09:42

The 40k ruleset was designed without time limits, but is designed so the game is supposed to end at a certain game turn.

Tournament s create a problem where the game has a time limit, however when that limit is reached before the game has ended then the players are not really completing a game. The game as a whole is designed around playing the game to completion, and comparing the result of an incomplete game to a complete game is not really valid.

Point in case, if you write up battle reports for complete games you will eventually see that in some games one side that is behind in the first three turns comes out ahead in the later turns.

One way to do timed rules:

Time each players pregame and turns, if one player is 125% or more than the other player when time is called they get only half points for the match.

Include "breaks". Keep in mind in a 3 hour match if one player is taking up 125% of the time then one player is using 80/180 minutes to another playing using 100/180 minutes. If say one player wastes 2 hours of the match because it favors their gunline army to only make it to turn 3 this makes it very obvious.

Most of the people who are purposefuly slow playing do it before the first turn completes, followed by their movement phases and "I'm picking my shooting targets". It doesn't happen when resolving the dice rolls, it's during selection of what to do that they get away with wasting time. As such it's not really necessary to have a clock go back in forth during action resolution.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/22 18:11:16

Rynner wrote: If it's not your money thats being spent on them why all the hate for it?

You got cheated at a tournament by a player using up nearly 1/2 of the game time on turn one through slow play. Again, as a good player, you called him out on it and involved the TO as needed.

My apologies, I meant him, not me, in my answer. I have corrected it. Here is what I was attempting to say:

What I meant was that my opponent got mad that he couldn't finish (or play) his turn 5 to win the game and thus had to settle for a draw instead of an easy win because he took so long to play and deploy. Chess clocks in that situation would have prevented a feel bad situation where I look like a poor sport despite playing way faster than I should have to to just get to turn 4.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/22 18:27:17

Why not just encourage players to finish games? I've seen people do all sorts of creative things to play fast when they're motivated, and if they're not motivated then they can hem and haw over whatever.

The best I've heard is limiting a player from winning if they don't play a game to completion. I believe a local tournament organizer gives x points for losing, y points for ties, and z points for winnging where x > y > z. I think losing is 1 point or something.

It might be something to make sure that if someone loses, but times out the game they should do worse than if they lose the game on time. Likewise winning but going overtime should mean that win is less valuable than losing on time.

Time each players pregame and turns, if one player is 125% or more than the other player when time is called they get only half points for the match.

Why would anyone play under that rule? I certainly wouldn't.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!

Rynner wrote:because I wouldn't let him play out turn 5 to win the game with 10 minutes left

What do you mean by you wouldn't let him play out the final turn? Why is this your decision as his opponent, and not the TO/judge's decision?

It could be that official time has been called, but I never heard of a tournament where players couldn't finish both sides of that turn.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!

Rynner wrote:because I wouldn't let him play out turn 5 to win the game with 10 minutes left

What do you mean by you wouldn't let him play out the final turn? Why is this your decision as his opponent, and not the TO/judge's decision?

It was a combination of mine/the judges. I'm sure I'll get jumped on for this but he had used the majority of the time and at a certain point as a player you have to put your foot down and say, "no, sorry, we don't have time to finish, you took up a majority of the time and that's just not fair." In fact I had warned him turn 2 that if he didn't play faster we were maybe playing 4 turns at best (which benefited me heavily).

To get more to the point - there were ten minutes left in the round, his shooting phase was going to take longer than that on its own. I had done everything I could reasonably to do to be fair to him but when you play a slow army (Renegades) and play slow you just don't finish. I also am paying for the event and want to finish games, win or lose. Not finishing games leaves with me a bad taste in my mouth and I know I'm not the only one.

In retrospec I do regret not just splitting the time but I didn't think about it at the time and once you start calling someone names and throwing a fit any credibility you have gets thrown out the window.

We even called a judge over to ask about finishing and they told us to call it. The fact is it was a situation that would have easily been resolved with chess clocks or both people using a stop watch and paying attention to the running time.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/22 21:40:53

Wait there was still time left and you somehow forced him to stop? WTF?

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!

Frazzled wrote:Wait there was still time left and you somehow forced him to stop? WTF?

Yes because we both couldn't finish a full turn.

The packet even said if theres 10 or less minutes don't start another turn.

Ok, gotcha. Agreed, you both have to have your full turn or thats inappropriate.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!

amanita wrote:We've played games where only the movement phase was timed

For me this seems to be the biggest issue- Sounds like it promotes armies centered around fewer models..riptide wings galore and punishes the players that like to play Imperial, Nids, Orks etc. their model counts tend to be higher so they get penalized just because it inherently takes longer to move them all?

How about this ditch the clocks. Take a 3 hour round make all games end on 6 turns.
There are 180 minutes in round divide that by the number of turns 6 adding one more turn for Deployment so 7 altogether

. That's 25 minutes for one game turn to take place so that leaves just under 13 minutes for each player to Deploy and in every player turn. Just give them their time and when they reach 13 minutes dice down.

MDizzle wrote:That's 25 minutes for one game turn to take place so that leaves just under 13 minutes for each player to Deploy and in every player turn. Just give them their time and when they reach 13 minutes dice down.

This doesn't work because a player's turn is not entirely under their control. For example, if, during your turn, I roll all of my saves reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaallllllyyyyyy slllloooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwlllyyyyy I'm taking up a huge chunk of your 13 minutes and all you can do is watch helplessly as your time ticks away.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rynner wrote:The packet even said if theres 10 or less minutes don't start another turn.

This makes a lot more sense, compared to the original explanation of you making a choice to refuse the additional turn instead of simply following the stated tournament rules.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/23 02:55:04

Laying low in a blood filled trench
Kill time 'til my very own death
On my face I can feel the falling rain
Never see my friends again

In the smoke, in the mud and lead
Smell the fear and the feeling of dread
Soon be time to go over the wall
Rapid fire and end of us all

You only get 15 seconds to roll saves if you don't finish rolling all wounds count as unsaved.Can you Imagine how good for the game this would be you could get rid of a lot of stupid death stars this way! You wouldn't have time to take all the saves and FNP's so people lists would change. You wouldn't have all day to summon units and roll a million gifts and powers.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/23 03:05:39

MDizzle wrote:You only get 15 seconds to roll saves if you don't finish rolling all wounds count as unsaved.Can you Imagine how good for the game this would be you could get rid of a lot of stupid death stars this way! You wouldn't have time to take all the saves and FNP's so people lists would change. You wouldn't have all day to summon units and roll a million gifts and powers.

You could get rid of all the dice saves if you just played chess instead.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!

I am the other TO for the Rampager league. The reason for using chess clocks is to increase speed of event play. We have noticed that we have several games that run past time due to well really no penalty. If it is 3 hour rounds I should get my hour and half no more no less. I should not be forced to play 3 rounds because my opponent decided he was going to use over 2 hours for his or her turns. The rules are for the event that me and my counter part run. I completely understand if someone does not want to use clocks and well fair enough. Chess clocks are going to be a thing for our events going forward. It my turn out to be bad and fail but you never know until you try.

I am the other TO for the Rampager league. The reason for using chess clocks is to increase speed of event play. We have noticed that we have several games that run past time due to well really no penalty. If it is 3 hour rounds I should get my hour and half no more no less. I should not be forced to play 3 rounds because my opponent decided he was going to use over 2 hours for his or her turns. The rules are for the event that me and my counter part run. I completely understand if someone does not want to use clocks and well fair enough. Chess clocks are going to be a thing for our events going forward. It my turn out to be bad and fail but you never know until you try.

Complete and utter bull. The armies are too diverse. A horde army vs an army consisting of three Knights comes to mind. Some armies are just going to require more time than others, count on it. Good luck with your experiment (that I've seen fail a couple times before over the last 20+ years...)

How about you pro-rate the time based on the number of miniatures in the army? So if I'm fielding 100+ models and he fields three, I get 95% of the allotted time. See how ridiculous it looks when you try to make it 'fair'?

Thank you for your friendly response! You get the same amount of time regardless of what army you bring. I should not have to give up my time because my opponent cannot execute his or her army within their given time frame. It literally does not matter what army you bring. Yes if I play and eltie style army with fewer models my play will go faster. Three hour rounds at 1850 you and your opponent have a hour and half to get through the game. I should not get less time to play because my opponent has 25 warp charge dice or 200 models what happen when two armies that have a lot of models or mechanics play one another to the get 4 hours to finish because their armies play longer. You response about pro rating per model gave me a nice laugh.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/02/23 16:09:44

Yes, it was meant to be ridiculous (give you a laugh). but you know that you are basically stating that you are playing favorites to 'Elite' armies, as they will have time to do all their actions with no penalties. And here I always thought that a TO/Judge (And yes, I've been one on many occasions, to include at multiple GW US Games Days and GTs...) was supposed to be impartial. Creating tourney rules that favor a particular type of army is not impartiality... And hey, if they don't finish, they don't finish, it happens. If your time limit is 3 hours, then at 3 hours it is dice down, game over, stop where you are and tabulate the results. If you see someone still rolling dice after you call time, go over and remind them. If you think someone is slow playing on purpose, penalize them (ie negative points to their overall score, judge's discretion). If someone keeps playing after time is up, penalize them.

Why don't you just tell everyone not to bother bringing any army that includes larger numbers of models, cause they will get screwed over.

But bottom line, it's your tourney, do what you want to. Doesn't matter if I agree with it or not.

Don't understand why TO still try that clock stuff. It simply doesn't work and there are better ways to make sure a game goes as "planned".

I once helped out with a Tournament format (and judge) and did the following:

- Bought a bunch of pokerchips for objectives and already placed them on the field at the start of every round (divide the board into 6 squares and one in each square for example).
- Printed out small stickers with 'terrain' descriptions and placed them on all terrain pieces. No discussion, you know what kind of terrain it is so move along.
- Placed all army-lists one week before the tournament on the website so that players could check out specific armies and their rules.
- After two hours at every round I asked the players what game turn their at. If their too slow then I would follow the game from that point on and make corrections if necessary based upon the situation and armies. If a game is only at the beginning of turn 4 after two hours (3 hour game) I would simply state that both armies got half an hour left within a 4 or 5 round time frame. As a judge I would see to it that it is handled fairly. If I was under the assumption that a specific player takes up a lot of time, I would keep an eye on him next round.
- Then I would check the tables with 'time consuming armies' to make sure that everything goes smoothly and correct players if the game simply goes to slow.

[MOD]
Cutting stuff up and bunging it back together in new and interesting ways.

Under the couch

40KTV wrote: If it is 3 hour rounds I should get my hour and half no more no less.

Except that's not how the game works.

You're not playing by yourself for an hour and a half, you're playing a 3-hour game with another person. If your players are consistently failing to finish games within that time, then the solution surely is to look at either increasing round time or decreasing army size.

And if it's a problem with certain players, then address it with those players.

It's already hard enough for horde armies to get everything done. Imposing extra time limitations on them simply means people will stop bringing those armies. If the goal is to return to a time when everyone just played marines, then this certainly seems like a great start.

Well, if you really think you must do this clock thing, then do it right. Make sure you advertise the clock rules well in advance of any tourney in which you use, and in any posting advertising that tourney. Don't just post the clock rules in one spot on your forum and link to that in the tourney posting. Post the complete clock rules in each and every ad for the tourney. That way people shouldn't show up unaware that you plan on using them. Probably the worst tournament experience I ever had was when a group sponsored a tourney at the Baltimore Battle Bunker, and used a bizarre (IMO) scoring where you got more points for losing than for a draw. They wanted to make it more competitive so you would try harder to win and not settle for a draw. So of course players that saw they were going to lose tanked their game and took the loss for more points... But not me, nope, I tried to win every game and wound up with one win and two draws. Course, I was also using an 1850 point army in a 2000 point tourney, field testing my GT army for that year... Point being, nothing on their club forum, nothing on any posts about the tourney, nothing at all indicated they were going to do this until you showed up at the tourney and they announced it (late in round 1, not even at the beginning of the tourney when it would be easier to turn around and leave). I'll admit I acted... poorly. Make sure the players are aware is what I'm saying, allows them to plan ahead and be ready for your clocks.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/02/23 19:45:09

Personally, I've never had an issue with time at any of my events. I'm the TO for Indy40k out of Indianapolis, IN. I run something between 18-20 a events a year. I believe its more up to the TO to have better time management. Make sure that players are well aware of when you start the timer and how much time they have left in the round. I build into all of my events a small break after each round. Reason being, 1 I'm most likely either entering scores in or I'm playing the ringer army and 2 sometimes players need a break between rounds. Doesn't have to be a long break 10-15 minutes.

Also, I avoid using the dice down method. I've had it happen to me a couple of times and its no fun. I use a finish your action and don't start a new one or finish the game turn. This way either you are finishing melee attacks and saves or shooting attacks and saves. If you use the finish the game turn method, the players are just eating into their own break time.

If time management is a huge issue, maybe you should evaluate how many points your event is and how much time is in the round.

I use 1 hour for 250-1000pts, 2 hours and 15 min for 1250-1500pts. 2 hours and 30 min for 1750-1850, 3 hours for 2000- 2500pts, and 4000+pts gets 1 hour and 10 minutes per player turn. (Broken down into 20 minute movement, 10 minute psykic, 20 minute shooting, and 20 minute assault. If time is called, you finish the action you are on and do not start another.)